Clockwise, from top left: Gov. John A. Burns with his predecessor, Republican Gov. Bill Quinn; Gov. Ben Cayetano; Lt. Gov. Tom Gill and longtime Honolulu Mayor Frank Fasi; Sen. Spark Matsunaga, Gov. George Ariyoshi and Gov. John Waihee. The Democrats wielded vast political power in the state for four decades. Advertiser library photos

By Jerry Burris
Advertiser Editorial Editor

In the end, they were victims of their own success.

Hawai'i's Democrats, who controlled almost every facet of political life in the Islands for 40 years — four decades! — finally succumbed last week to the eroding factors of shifting demographics, institutional weariness and the plain fact that they had accomplished most of what they originally set out to do and now were basically hanging on.

They had achieved an unparalleled measure of social, economic and political success for the multi-ethnic mix that made up the backbone of their party. But in 2002, that wasn't enough.

What, said a new generation of voters — both local-born and from elsewhere — have you done for us lately?

It's true that the Democratic Party remains a powerful force in Hawai'i, controlling both houses of the Legislature, the congressional delegation and a substantial chunk of county government.

But the plain fact is that the center of political power in Hawai'i, perhaps more than any other state, is within the governor's office. A legacy of centralization that stretches back to the monarchy and runs through territorial days gives unrivaled power to the governor.

This one individual names judges, appoints boards and commissions, controls economic and social policy, and sets as well as drives the legislative agenda. While the counties have gained in power over the years, they remain distinct second fiddles to the decision-makers in the State Capitol.

So this vast political power has now shifted into the hands of the Republicans. Linda Lingle won the office she narrowly lost four years ago, edging aside Mazie Hirono, an inheritor of the Democratic Party legacy who was unable to separate herself from her party's history.

And what a history it is!

Linda Lingle and James "Duke" Aiona appear to have succeeded at least partly because a substantial number of Democrat voters decided simply to stay home rather than cast their vote. Associated Press

While traditional history dates the success of Hawai'i's Democrats to the "revolution" of 1954, when they first emerged as a postwar legislative power, it is equally possible to set their birth year at 1962.

We were a new state that year, and the Jet Age had just arrived, heralding the beginning of mass tourism. Ground was broken for the huge Ala Moana Center, signaling a change in the buying and spending habits of a generation. Industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, a steamroller of a man, came ashore to begin building his dream of a mega-resort in Waikiki and a new, California-style suburb around an East O'ahu marsh.

And in politics, a taciturn former cop named John A. Burns rode an energized wave of ethnic Democrats, for the most part sons and daughters of an immigrant plantation generation, to the peak of political power: the governorship.

Some have characterized this as a triumph of multi-ethnic politics. Others suggest it was the emergence of a new form of liberal, inclusive and creative politics that was hatched in the hothouse atmosphere of the nation's newest state.

All that is true. But it was also the result of a politics of resentment, of an effort to balance social scales that had become terribly unbalanced over the previous decades.

Power of unionism

The voters who propelled Burns to power wanted.

They wanted equal access to education. They wanted equal access to economic opportunity. They wanted equal access, frankly, to the clubs, neighborhoods and cliques that had previously been denied them.

And they also saw politics as a way to achieve some of the advantages and advances that they were unable to achieve in other ways, most notably over the collective bargaining table.

One has to remember: The history of Hawai'i politics in those days was sharply defined by unionism and union politics. The plantations were organized, the docks were organized and — after the 1968 Constitutional Convention — public employees were organized, with the right to strike.

The goal was not to create a liberal utopia, necessarily, but rather to bring benefits to working men and women in whatever way possible, over the bargaining table or through the legislative process.

A dramatic example of this is Hawai'i's pioneering pre-paid health insurance law, the first in the nation to guarantee health insurance to full-time working men and women. This was, of course, socially progressive. But it was also a dirt-plain benefit that workers achieved not through negotiation with their employers but through the legislative process.

Or consider Hawai'i's statewide land-use law, unique in the nation. This was — is — seen as a progressive environmental practice that regulates hopscotch development while preserving valuable open space and agricultural lands.

And so it does. But the Land Use Commission, like so many innovations, had a rather practical value as well. It created a political process, controlled by Democrats, through which any plantation had to go if it sought to give up agriculture for other uses, such as resort or housing development.

In short, it was a way to preserve those valuable unionized plantation jobs.

Leadership passed on

Mazie Hirono and Matt Matsunaga were defeated as much by changes in the state's Democratic Party as hard issues. Associated Press

It was a dynamic that propelled Burns to the governorship in 1962, elected him twice more, then propelled a succession of lieutenant governors — representing a rainbow of the ethnic spectrum — into the governorship. From Burns to George Ariyoshi, the first governor of Japanese ancestry; from Ariyoshi to John Waihee, the first elected governor of Hawaiian ancestry; and from Waihee to Ben Cayetano, the first governor of Filipino ancestry.

But all revolutions have a half-life. And this was readily apparent to those who watched the Democrats carefully. Waihee, for instance, had to struggle from far back in the pack to win his first bid for governor against a seemingly invincible Cec Heftel.

While Heftel was a Democrat, he was hardly part of the legacy that stood at the core of the Democratic tradition. And it was the collapse of the Heftel campaign more than anything else that helped Waihee get over the bar.

Democrats stayed home

Cayetano, too, began his drive for the governorship as an underdog. For his second election, it took every ounce of power, influence and favor the Democrats had to squeak through a statistical dead heat against Lingle in her first bid for governor.

And it is telling that Lingle's victory was not because she gained great ground with the voters between 1998 and 2002. Rather, it was because a substantial number of Democrats simply stayed home this year.

In 1998, Lingle received 198,952 votes. Cayetano won with 204,206.

This year — not a presidential election year, it should be noted — Lingle's total went down to 197,009 while Hirono's numbers dropped to 179,647. A lot of folks — a lot of Democrats, it would appear — just didn't vote.

Sure, some of that could have been disgust or apathy. But part of it is that those who might traditionally have voted Democratic simply didn't see the need to do so.

They didn't want badly enough. They were the beneficiaries of 40 years of Democratic Party struggle, and they were simply too comfortable or too distracted by the press of daily life to make the effort.

And among those who did vote, a fair number were focused less on issues of social justice and equity and more on the the routine issues of holding a job, educating their kids and fighting traffic.

Lingle appealed to these voters.

Children of revolution

You can see it in the newer West O'ahu "suburb" districts, which demographically look pretty much like the traditional Democratic vote. But they didn't vote that way. Lingle did well in those districts where the sons and daughters of the Democrats of the revolution have moved out into houses of their own.

For years, political insiders believed a Republican would win when the size of newcomer voters — mostly Caucasians from the Mainland — achieved a critical mass. As it turned out, the first GOP victory since the statehood elections of 1960 owed as much to a hollowing out from within the Democratic Party as it did to an influx of newcomers.

As a sidelight, it should be noted that while the Hawai'i Democrats were widely recognized as being one of the longest-lived political dynasties in the nation, they were hardly monolithic.

Will Rogers once famously said that he didn't belong to any organized party, he was a Democrat. And that couldn't be more true of the Hawai'i Democrats.

Almost from the start, Democrats fought among themselves almost as much as they fought the Republicans.

Tom Gill's famous 1970 campaign against Burns (Gill had been lieutenant governor) exposed a serious divide in the party between the "old guard" and newer, somewhat younger, more socially liberal and environmentally focused Democrats.

(Hirono got into politics, in fact, as a "Tom Gill" Democrat.)

And then there was Frank Fasi, Honolulu's long-term mayor, who was elected and re-elected as a Democrat but never was close to party powers. A tremendous vote-getter on O'ahu, Fasi finally became so fed up with the party that he formed his own political organization before finally becoming a Republican.

Four years ago, Lingle ran a classic "throw the rascals out" campaign, and it nearly worked. This time around, the message was more nuanced, but it was fundamentally the same thing: time for a "change," a "new beginning."

And it appears the voters finally said "why not?" What remains unclear is whether this was a renunciation of the Democratic Party that signals the start of a new Republican era in Hawai'i or whether this was simply the voters giving the Democrats a time-out.

The answer to that question lies in the next election.

Reach Jerry Burris through letters@honoluluadvertiser.com.